104 
BE AMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
point to the immediate relation of the material to the 
spiritual. 
Passing from these things to matters less directly 
associated with the phenomena of life, we find beauty 
still predominant, and poetry of the most lofty character 
the presiding idea. A dark surface absorbs more heat 
than a light one; at the same time it radiates or parts 
with heat more rapidly than a light surface. The 
chemist exposes the backs of his hands to the noonday 
sun ; the one bare, and the other covered with a black 
cloth. The uncovered hand will be at a temperature of 
from 85 to 90 degrees, and the covered one at from 98 
to 106 degrees. The black colour absorbs about 15 
per cent, more heat than the white one, and yet the 
covered hand is uninjured, wdiile the other is scorched 
and blistered ; in this way, although apparently in oppo¬ 
sition to the result required, has God provided for His 
children who dwell under the fierce heat of the southern 
sun. He has made them black, that they may live in 
harmony with the golden sunshine above them, and not 
as the objects of the white man's tyranny, when he for¬ 
gets his God, and darkens the green wilderness with the 
shadow of a devil. 
There is poetry in such facts as these; and when the 
human mind has achieved for itself a nobler inheritance 
of wisdom than it now possesses, and true genius takes 
the place of commercial craft, we shall find the poet and 
the painter combining to do honour to the men by 
whose labours these wonderful truths have been unfolded. 
The picture of Faraday turning a ray of light from its 
course by the power of a magnet, under the direction of 
